HOUSTON (AP) -- Authorities searched Wednesday for five children they say were abducted by a woman who took the Louisiana family in after Hurricane Katrina.
The woman, Rhonda Tavey, told Dallas television station WFAA that she had taken the children for their own safety. An Amber Alert was issued Wednesday for the children, two boys and three girls ages 3 to 8. Tavey is not considered armed or dangerous, Hawkins said.
"It's not kidnapping on my part. It's child abandonment on their part," she told the station. The children gathered close to Tavey or played on the floor as she was interviewed.
Tavey said their mother, Erica Alphonse, had been gone for some time and "caused total chaos" in her house when she came back earlier this summer.
"I love my children with all my heart," Alphonse told Houston television station KHOU.
Prosecutors say Tavey was a volunteer after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast in August 2005. She opened her home to the children and Alphonse.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Jane Waters, chief of the family criminal law division, told the Houston Chronicle that "they were all one big happy family" before Alphonse called the Harris County constable's office July 13.
Constable spokesman Capt. Paul Staton said Alphonse reported that "an acquaintance of hers was being reluctant to let her see her own children," the newspaper reported.
"Basically, she took in the family, including the mom, and then when it came time for her to give the kids back to their mom she refused and she left the area," Waters told the paper.
The Harris County district attorney's office charged Tavey, 44, with five counts of kidnapping. Spokeswoman Donna Hawkins told The Associated Press that constables had contacted Tavey's attorney before filing charges against her on Monday but that the woman refused to return the children.
Tavey told The Dallas Morning News that she plans to turn herself in as soon as she talks to her attorney. No lawyer for Tavey could immediately be located by The Associated Press. Hawkins said she did not know the name of Tavey's attorney.
Tavey told WFAA earlier Wednesday in Fort Worth, before the Amber Alert was issued, that the children's "parents are into drugs, crime and I know God put these kids into my hands to take care of."
"My whole thing is the safety and well-being of the kids is number one," Tavey told WFAA. "And that's why I've taken the efforts I have to remove them from all of that harm and hurt toward them."
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